== README for replication archive of ==
== Ban, Pamela and Seth J. Hill. "Efficacy of Congressional Oversight." American Political Science Review. ==



***** To run replication:
 1. Use Stata and execute "./code/01_CreateAndMergeData.do".
    Produces data files used for analysis:
      ./data/agencylevel.csv
      ./data/AgencyLevel.dta
      ./data/programlevel.csv
      ./data/ProgramLevel.dta

 2. Use Stata and execute "./code/02_Analysis.do".
    Produces Tables 2-A11 in ./tables/.

 3. Use R and execute "./code/03_Analysis.R".
    Produces Figures 1-A2 in ./figures/ 
     and ./tables/Table 1.



***** Files for Data Creation
* These data files are used to create the intermediate datasets in 01_CreateAndMergeData.do.

"IP_hearings_agency_proquest.csv": Data on committee hearings on improper payments from ProQuest files.  Source: Ban, Park, and You (2024), "How Are Politicians Informed? Witnesses and Information Provision in Congress."  For proprietary access, replicators should contact ProQuest.

"proquest_hearings_witnesses_2018_2021.csv": Data from collection of hearings on improper payments from ProQuest Congressional subscription search.  Accessed on April 29, 2023.

"witness.dta": Data on congressional committee witnesses from Ban, Park, and You (2024), "How Are Politicians Informed? Witnesses and Information Provision in Congress." URL: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/TKRHZU.

"reports_ip.csv": Data from collection of committee reports on improper payments from Congress.gov.  URL: https://www.congress.gov.  Accessed on July 31, 2023.

"payments_all.csv": Data from annual improper payments datasets downloaded from Payment Accuracy for federal fiscal years 2015 and forward and historical annual financial reports from each agency.  URL: https://www.paymentaccuracy.gov/payment-accuracy-the-numbers/.  Accessed on November 26, 2022.

"adjacent_committees.csv": Data on agencies called for oversight hearings by each committee in the decade 1990-2000, collected from committee hearing files from ProQuest.  Source: Ban, Park, and You (2024), "How Are Politicians Informed? Witnesses and Information Provision in Congress."  For proprietary access, replicators should contact ProQuest.

"budget_agency.dta": Data from agency budget authorities and discretionary budget authorities downloaded from the Office of Management and Budget.  URL: https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/historical-tables/.  Accessed on March 6, 2024.  

"hearings_summary.csv": Data on committee hearings on improper payments from ProQuest files.  Source: Ban, Park, and You (2024), "How Are Politicians Informed? Witnesses and Information Provision in Congress."  For proprietary access, replicators should contact ProQuest.



***********************************
***** Software Dependencies *******
***********************************


All analyses were replicated in R version 4.3.1 "Beagle Scouts" and Stata/MP 17.0 on a system running macOS Sonoma 14.6

* Stata add-ons required for 02_Analysis.do:

[1] package estout from http://fmwww.bc.edu/repec/bocode/e
      'ESTOUT': module to make regression tables

[2] package ftools from http://fmwww.bc.edu/repec/bocode/f
      'FTOOLS': module to provide alternatives to common Stata commands optimized for large datasets

[3] package reghdfe from http://fmwww.bc.edu/repec/bocode/r
      'REGHDFE': module to perform linear or instrumental-variable regression absorbing any number of high-dimensional fixed effects


* R package dependences in 03_Analysis.R:

[1] RColorBrewer_1.1-3 Hmisc_5.1-2        haven_2.5.3        data.table_1.14.8  bit64_4.0.5       [6] bit_4.0.5   






